by Giles Foden
As the Cythère passed between the cannons, Nick pointed, lifting a hand from the wheel. ‘Look! That’s the boat, the one that was at Lyly.’
They moored a few boats away from the cabin cruiser and disembarked. By the port office, a beggar with a bad case of jiggers thrust out a swollen foot as they walked by. Next to him a young Swahili boy was trimming the sails of a toy boat made from the hollow shell of a baobab fruit. Queller was right. It didn’t look the kind of place where murderers might hole up. But the cruiser was there.
In the distance, they heard the sound of ululation.
They passed a malodorous shark, strung up on a bamboo frame waiting to be skinned, and wandered through a confusing knot of dank alleyways. To the casual observer – say a red-eyed fisherman coiling a rope in the porch of his house – they must have looked no different to the other muzungu tourists roaming about.
The ululation grew louder.
They finally found Main Street. Here, too, various items – copper trays and coffee pots, baskets and mats woven from reeds, carved wooden spoons and Arab chests made from ebony or mangrove and studded with brass – were all laid out for the tourists to inspect and, with luck, purchase. There were also colourful collections of cowries, piles of other, tinier shells, plus a few Arab swords and daggers. Miranda noticed a stall hung with silks and Persian rugs, and another with malachite bracelets and anklets, and beads made from ivory and amber.
They walked on, past a man doggedly pushing a barrow of pineapples towards the beach, into the centre of the town. There was a crowd in the square, also a couple of large black bulls, held in a stockade. Gated, the stockade funnelled into a kind of grandstand.
‘What is happening here?’ Miranda asked a little brown man selling polystyrene cups of coffee from a wooden tray hung round his shoulders.
His eyes filled with amusement. ‘You do not know? It is mchezo wa ngombe.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The game of the bull. Will you buy some coffee? It’s ginger-flavoured.’
Miranda obliged, and the others followed suit. Having no option, hemmed in on every side now by the buzzing crowd, the Americans stood on a crumbling white wall under a casuarina tree to watch the bullfight. The custom was, said Queller, a strange remnant from the days of Portuguese influence on the islands. Miranda remembered him telling her about this back in Washington.
Another place, another time … was where the bulls seemed to rush from too, charging into the grandstand raising billowing clouds of dust. The pen was like those into which the fish had been tipped at the harbour, only much taller and sturdier, made from palm-trunk uprights lined with strips of bamboo. Cheered on by the crowd, some of whom were beating drums and blowing horns, African youths leaped in and out of the pen, weaving between the bulls, flicking them with pieces of white cloth. Others, hanging over the edges of the pen, baited the animals with pointed sticks, or tried to catch them with neck-ropes and jump onto their backs.
* * *
The game continued. The crowd was all eyes, and the eyes of the crowd were red from the dust. The bulls had small horns but – snorting, pawing the ground with their hooves – they presented formidable opponents for the bare-chested youths. Each took his turn, the showier ones cartwheeling and pirouetting. Once a young man had been in, he went through the crowd, grinning and covered in sweat and, if he had been wounded, streaming with blood. In front of him, he carried a brass pot into which by way of payment for the entertainment, onlookers dropped coins.
Or, as in the case of Queller and Nick and Miranda, five-dollar bills.
Or, as in the case of Zayn Mujuj, who had been drawn from his hotel into the whooping crowd, nothing at all.
One youth, especially pleased with himself, told the Americans that the bulls were called Bom-Bom and Wembe. The youth himself was called Ali, he informed them.
‘What do the bulls’ names mean?’ Miranda asked.
‘In Inglezi,’ Ali replied, beaming wildly, ‘Bom-Bom and Wembe is Machine-Gun and Razor!’
Before they jumped into the pen, the youths made a barking noise – to get up their courage – the drums beat all the louder, and the women sang and trilled.
‘Kige-lege-le! Kige-lege-le! Kige-kige-lege-lege-kigelegele!’
Or chanted in unison, clapping their hands: ‘Aliye mbuya yangu naanchezele ngombe!’ He who is my lover, he must play the bull.
So Ali explained. The men, meanwhile, were clapping their hands and whistling. Their job – their job was to put Shetani, or Satan, into the bulls.
* * *
Another youth jumped into the pen. He was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a monkey on it. He was thrilled to be back among his people and their customs – to be back with his friend Ali, to be away from all the rigidity of al-Qaida, with its heavy sense of mission, its burden of holy murder. But he wasn’t, he wasn’t away from it, because Zayn, who had barged his way through the crowd to the front of the pen, had fixed his eyes upon him.
* * *
Through the criss-cross of bodies, through the pall of dust, Nick Karolides saw them both, the terrorists, a vision of half-remembered faces – one shaven-headed, bulky and fiery-eyed, the other delicate and nervous but wanting to prove himself at last in the game of the bull. Faces from a mist of pain, from the memory of Lyly and his ordeal there.
Khaled, in the centre of the arena now, caught hold of a bull’s rump and leant on it to goad it back into play. The other bull had been caught in a neck-rope by a youth hanging over the side. It was thumping itself into the side of the pen, making it shake and the crowd call out indignantly.
‘That’s one of them in the middle now!’ Nick shouted, jumping off the wall and forcing his way into the mêlée, in the direction of the pen. ‘The other is the big guy across the other side.’
Miranda and Queller followed him, the crowd parting as the muzungu pushed through. They reached the edge of the stockade. The bull Khaled was pushing, Bom-Bom or Wembe as the case may be, was still refusing to move. Suddenly the other bull, having disentangled itself from the neck-rope, wheeled round and charged him. He rolled over in the matting and the bull cannoned into the other side – knocking Zayn, who’d climbed up the fence, into the arena, much to the amusement of the crowd.
* * *
Still hanging on to the tail of the other bull, squinting through the dust-cloud, Khaled saw the face of the Palestinian: he was wearing an expression of awful amiability. Horror-struck, Khaled let go of the bull’s tail and dashed to the edge of the pen. Zayn, pursued by the other bull, ran after him and started dragging him back down from the side. The crowd cheered loudly, assuming this was all part of the entertainment. The pursuing bull gored Zayn in the leg and he fell to the ground, whereupon the bull started to trample him, snorting of triumph.
The young man climbed over the fence and fled through the crowd. The three Americans ran after him, down Main Street. Khaled knocked over, in the course of his flight, the pineapple man and his barrow, then disappeared into a maze of narrow alleyways. They lost him for a while before Queller – who had dropped behind, stumbling on pineapples – spotted him reappear from a side entrance. Reappear and straight away dodge, on seeing the sprawling white man, thinking himself unseen, into the doorway of a shop. A sign above the door said ‘SHELLS AND OTHER CURIOS OF NOTE’.
Drawing his automatic, Queller went inside. Seeing the gun, the Indian shopkeeper gave a shriek of horror and gestured to a back room. There was another room, and a third, till Queller gained the inmost chamber. This was ill lit, a paraffin lamp casting jumpy light on cardboard boxes full of shells. He looked round. There was no one to be seen.
Then he heard a noise and approached a corner, holding the gun out in front of him. Suddenly, a shape moved in the darkness and a hand came out, flinging a fistful of tiny, sharp shells into his face. Momentarily blinded, Queller lowered his weapon. Khaled took this opportunity to burst from his hiding place and bowl him over.
He ran t
hrough the shop, past the astonished Indian, and out into the street again: smack into Nick and Miranda, who had backtracked. He sprang up like a cat and, pushing them aside, ran off again. Nick sprained his wrist, falling off-balance into the concrete gutter when Khaled pushed. It was full of stagnant water and floating, all-too-familiar solids. Queller re-emerged from the shop and in no time at all – not even enough time for him to wrinkle his nose at the smell – the three of them set off in pursuit.
It was Nick who caught him, in a diving tackle next to one of the stalls. Queller, reaching them breathless, trained his gun on the youth.
‘You’re not going to shoot him!’ Miranda yelled, stepping forward.
The youth took advantage of Queller’s distraction to jump up and grasp one of the Arab daggers on display at the tourist stall. He dragged Miranda to him and put the knife to her neck. Holding her in front of him as a shield, he began to walk backwards away from Queller and Nick. With the point of the knife at her throat, Miranda was frozen in a posture of wide-eyed stupefaction.
Queller lowered his gun again. His empty sleeve flapped in the breeze.
‘You can’t get far,’ he said, his stump crawling with pain.
He only half believed the words himself, deriding himself as he said them, deriding himself also for that same derision, drawing him away as it did from alertness, from senses fully engaged to present danger. He stood helplessly, looking at Miranda with the knife at her throat. He felt old and powerless, a shadow of his former self, the active agent that age and a missing arm and the death of a wife had taken away from him. The gun was in his hand and it was bright and breezy on Pemba, but he was going, Jack Queller, into an area of psychic darkness. He was by his wife’s bedside in the hospital again, he was up on the mountain with bin Laden again.
The youth was already running to the dock, dragging Miranda with him, pulling her, clutching her to his monkey T-shirt. There were too many people for Queller to shoot. People were running to and fro in between. Nick was already following, shouting.
* * *
Holding the woman’s head beneath his arm, Khaled unwound the rope that moored the cabin cruiser to the quayside. Then he climbed in, pulling the woman behind him. He looked frantically for where Zayn had put the keys. He opened a cubbyhole. There was a gun there, one of Zayn’s, a little silver pistol, and there was a flashlight. But no key. He pulled down the sun visor. There they were, where keys are always kept.
He started the engine. All the while the young white woman was held in the crook of his arm. She was very quiet. He had no idea what he was going to do with her. He had no idea what he was going to do with himself. This was not a good situation. How had he imagined he would be able to slip back, undisturbed, into his old life? All he knew, right now, was that he had to get away from Zayn, get away from al-Qaida, get away from the Amerikani.
Queller and Nick ran down to the docks and powered up the Cythère. They were gabbling, blaming each other. Queller, his empty sleeve trailing behind him, had lost his safety-pin and his self-possession; Nick was losing his dreaminess, finding himself out at last. Reflected in the windshield of the Cythère as it surged forward, he confronted his own image: flecked with spray, the self-portrait was mesmerising, wavy as the sea behind it, wavy and dangerous, too, since he had to drive the Cythère, Olivier’s difficult boat.
And so two pairs of props threshed the shallows of Chake harbour. Two craft sped out into the bay, hulls smacking the waves, white tails of foam issuing from bows as steel blades cut into the water, each according to its pattern, turbulence marshalled to a single line. The stories could be told second by second, relating the thought of those in the boats, the feelings they had, the words they breathed, accompanied by proper gesticulations of the body – just as the old men of the Swahili, those people of the sea, related their own voyagers’ tales from times before, in port shebeens and firelit villages down the coast, now as long ago …
Some short time later, a wounded figure, streaming blood, stumbled out of the glowering firmament down to the harbour. He gave a roar of anger on seeing the boats bounding away in the distance. Clambering across, Zayn tried a few of the outboards on the fishing boats, ignoring the shouts of their owners. Out the cords came, in they snickered. None would start. Seeing a tourist pull up on the little beach next to the harbour, a young white man with a Scandinavian look, Zayn splashed out into the surf and relieved him of his jet ski. When the puzzled Swede protested, Zayn cuffed him like a bear, knocking him into the breakers.
31
The boat ahead swept up to the foaming ruff of the reef, drove alongside for a short while, then – angling in at a place where the foam subsided – passed into the lagoon.
‘That’s the mlango,’ Nick said. ‘Gap in the coral.’
The young African had tried to evade them in his boat – steering from side to side and hiding behind other islands – but it had not been difficult to follow him to Lyly. The Cythère was more powerful, but the cabin cruiser had too much of a head start for them to overhaul it.
‘This is where they put the bomb together?’ asked Queller.
‘Yes. Christ, I hope she’s all right. Can you see inside the cabin?’
Queller lowered the expensive binoculars kept on the Cythère. They were heavy to hold with one hand. He had to shout to be heard above the sound of the engine.
‘No, I can’t. I’m not surprised he’s come back here though.’
‘Personally,’ said Nick, keeping the boat steady as it bounced across the waves, ‘I’ve had it with this fucking place. If he does anything to her…’
Queller said nothing. The white tower of the lighthouse came into view. Its outlines hardened as they approached. Queller noticed there was a house, too, and another building. Almost everywhere else, the forest covered the island like a thick green carpet.
‘Why do you think he has–’ he heard Nick say, as the other boat beached, ‘come back here?’
‘They always go back. Like a dog to its vomit. It’s a criminal pathology.’
‘Maybe he’s run out of fuel,’ Nick shouted.
The Cythère sped up to the door in the reef, then suddenly swerved to one side.
‘Shit!’ Nick said. ‘She’s too broad in the beam. She won’t get through.’
He eased off the throttle.
‘Give me those.’
Queller handed him the binoculars – but it was easy enough to see what was happening with the naked eye. The man was dragging Miranda up the beach, towards an opening in the forest.
‘He must know them,’ Nick said, desperately.
‘Know what?’
The engine throbbed in the water.
‘There are caves on this island. I couldn’t find a way in, not above water. Leggatt cut a hole through. That opening. That’s where he’s taking her. We’ll have to swim.’
Queller looked down at the outline of the coral beneath the water. The clearance they needed was only a matter of a foot either side. Struck by an idea, he opened his jacket and produced his pistol.
‘We could shoot it away.’
Nick looked aghast. He seemed to hesitate, for some reason Queller couldn’t understand, then nodded. ‘All right.’
Queller slipped off the safety catch and aimed at the edge of the coral. There was a boom as he pulled the trigger and a tall splash as the bullet hit the water. A large piece of reef dropped away to the ocean floor. Then he did the same on the other side. Another white shadow spun down. Now there was plenty of room. Queller put his gun back in its shoulder holster.
Nick let out the throttle, executed a circle in the water, and they passed through easily. He drove the boat directly onto the beach.
‘Easy,’ Queller said.
Nick cut the engine.
‘I’ll go in.’
They hit the sand with a heavy thump. Queller was knocked off balance and, with only one arm to steady himself, half fell onto the deck.
‘I’ll go in,’ Nick rep
eated. ‘Into the cave. You stay.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if we both went in?’
Nick shook his head.
‘You wait here. Keep watch. Leggatt said there were various openings, he could come up any one of them.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I – wasn’t able to find any.’
Queller frowned. ‘I better come.’
‘Stay here. He could just reappear and take our boat.’
Nick picked up the heavy rubberised flashlight Olivier Pastoreau kept in the cabin of the Cythère. Queller took the binoculars and hung them round his neck. They climbed out of the boat and began jogging up the sand.
‘If that’s how you want it,’ Queller said, short of breath. ‘You better take this.’ He reached into his jacket and produced the gun.
Nick looked at it askance. ‘I’ve never really shot guns much. I could hit her.’
They reached the opening that Leggatt had hacked out in the forest curtain.
‘Just take it. This is the safety catch.’
Nick took it and weighed it in his hand for a second.
‘Be careful,’ Queller said.
But the younger man had already set off down the passage through the trees, at the end of which an oval opening could be seen through mossy green rocks. Queller walked back down to the beach, anxious, feeling that he should have pressed harder about going into the cave.
He waited by the shoreline at first, looking out at a sandbar appearing to the west. Noticing a strange, circular structure at the place where the arm of the sandbar joined the beach proper, he walked over to it. The thing was like a little fortification. Sticks in the sand, shored up with heavy rocks right round. He peeked over and looked inside it, but there didn’t seem to be anything but sand.
* * *
The flashlight was still in the crook of wet rock where he’d placed it. It sent light skittering over the green walls of the cavern. Miranda was afraid. The young African man pushed her against the algae. He held the point of the knife at her throat with one hand, the other gripping a fistful of hair. Gasping for breath, she told herself again and again to keep calm.